Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Reality?

Jim Bagott, in his book “Farewell to Reality” says (P53) “The conclusions of quantum theory may be utterly bizarre, but this is a theory founded on solid observational and experimental fact.”

Point taken, but, earlier in the book he stressed at some length that our observations of “reality” may well not represent reality. If this is the case, and I would not dispute that it is; and if facts are an expression of reality; how can we be sure that our observations of quantum theory have any link to the reality of QT, if indeed such a reality exists?

Also, how can we know that those things we learn from our experiments are actually facts, rather than just appearances arising from our own observational bias?

It can justifiably be argued that this is philosophy rather than science, but surely such philosophical speculation must be the corollary of claiming that we cannot observe reality directly.

I haven't read the book, and probably won't. So I wonder just what was the context in which he said that our observations may not have any link to reality? That could make a difference in the interpretation of his writing.

Then of course we get to the question of what is reality. The free online Merriam Webster Dictionary defines reality as:

This of course is not nearly a good enough definition for this discussion. It just opens the door for a lot of opinions. So I will offer my opinion: Reality is what we can objectively observe and which can be predicted to react in the same way to the same stimulus over time. For example the computer I am writing this on is a part of reality(1).

When it comes to QM we run into some problems, because QM isn't reality, in and of itself. QM is a description of how things work at the quantum level. The things that QM describes the actions of are members of reality, but we don't know for sure what they are. QM does a great job of describing their actions, and we can work with those descriptions as if they are reality, but the actual reality of those things and interactions may be quite different from the way we visualize them. Possibly this is what Bagott was referring to.

(1) Granted the computer may not always work the same. Everything can fail, but the general idea still holds, if we just include eventual failure in our expectations.

Bill Gill

When I have a few minutes to spare I will look back at the book to see if I can throw any light on the context.

BTW, I found it a very thought provoking book. I would certainly recommend it.